Slingshot Sean

It seems clearer now that I should put the horse before the cart and start doing what I have until now only been applying for liberty to do - research and develop.

I have applied for a number of post-graduate study opportunities that have all been declined, or not responded to. However colleagues have encouraged me to put down my thoughts and ideas on the research that I am conducting informally - perhaps this should become more formalised with the start of the NUFFIC eLearning Capacity Development at the University of Zululand project - which all centres around the use of ICT in Higher Education.

The topic of technology-enabled and supported education is a current and confusing yet hopeful and exciting one for those in the wings of the eLearning Stage. There is definately an increasing demand to be technologically enabled and empowered (eEnabled, eEmpowered) by students in colleges, schools and corporations who are embracing Workplace Skills Development actively, energetically and enthusiastically. As for the rest... well if they are not online then they are offline, and as we know that means that they are uncontactable, unreachable and unconnectable.

Is that perhaps the Real meaning behind the use of ICT, not only in education and corporation, but in connecting ordinary people in a growing array of mediums, dimensions and levels .... so that.... we can talk, share, discuss, debate, refute, correct, and train the child(ren) in the right way... this is starting to sound very much like 1 Tim 2.16;

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

I think on this often, that the purpose of all these forrays into Joomla, Moodle, Google and the myriad of open source solutions that catch my eye - are merely tools that enable communication among ordinary people, who are closer to one another than ever before by virtue of the internetworking that is drawing people everywhere, from every tribe and tongue, together, into fellowship - back to fellowship, back to "ubuntu" even as they use Ubuntu to operate within this new system, this new open and source revealing (revelational perhaps?) space.

Hopefully in all of this we will be drawn closer to THE OPEN SOURCE... this can only be the Creator Himself. Surely he ordains the networks that govern our connectedness? Surely there is nothing new under the sun, all knowledge comes from HIM, and we only "discover" truth and knowledge by divine grace, seeing the truth of the matter, the source of the matter, as our eyes are opened to a greater and greater revelation of our "coding", our DNA, albeit via php, html or javascript, we start to comprehend order, not chaos, algorithms that organise the very information that we produce, disseminate and absorb.